seeking out, tasting, creating, and sharing delicious food. occasional tangents into music, movies, and other wholly relevant topics.your hosts (excited just to be here!): "The Academic" James & "The Dilettante" Matt

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Saturday, 10 December 2011

The Best Of The Best - Top 5 Vegan Cookbooks of The Year (It's been a terrific year for the trans-seasonal trouser)

Hopefully you get the Ab Fab reference... If not, oh well, just call me Mr. Stone.

This year has been a truly fantastic year in Vegan Cookbooks. I've been eagerly watching vegan cuisine (yes, cuisine) transform over the last 4-5 years or so, gradually rising from the ashes of the vegetarian craze of the 80s (with those dark, grey, nutty, vegetable-y recipe photos that hold absolutely zilch appeal to me) and various health food fads and transforming into something that stands on its own two feet as a legitimate, wonderful, decadent, and achievable way of eating. Plus, it has all the benefits of saving the world, and letting our morals and common-sense do the talking AND walking.

I realise there have been wonderful cookbook authors putting out criminally underrated, but solid releases over the last 15 years or so (hello, Bryanna Clark Grogan), but the new-found popular interest in Vegan Food perpetuated by well-meaning, but vapid celebrities and their blink-and-you'll-miss-it holier-than-thou (WOW, a double hyphenation, The Academic is shaking his head at me as he proof-reads this very sentence, I just know it) dietary choices are putting us in the spotlight. "Is honey-teriyaki turducken, like, vegan?". Coupled with the powers of this new-fandangled internet thingy, with its widespread access to forums, social networking and grassroots communication, driven by authors like Isa Chandra Moskowitz encouraging open-sharing of recipes and techniques, well, we're really soaring forward collectively.

No matter what your preferred style of eating, and your interest, or lackthereof, in the healthiness of the food you're eating, there's something in this year's Best of The Best - Top 5 Vegan Cookbooks Of The Year - edition for everyone. Trust me - you will have your mind blown by every one of these cookbooks, and their respective authors' back-catalogues. They're essential. I would even go so far as to say they are my favourite cookbooks of all time (with the addition of Dreena Burton's "Eat, Drink and Be Vegan").

ESSENTIAL.

THE LISTVegan Dinerby Julie HassonMake: Skillet-Baked Panko Cutlets. This is actually the best thing I've ever cooked. Ever. Juicy, delicious home-made cutlets, breaded, fried and served with a rich tomato sauce. BUT MAKE EVERYTHING FROM THIS BOOK. EVERYTHING.

Celebrate Veganby Dynise BalcavageMake: I'm going to have to break with convention here, and recommend the Curry Cashew Casserole (And everything else) from Dynise's first book, "The Urban Vegan". It's unfaultable, so healthy, and so easy to put together and bake.

World Vegan Feastby Bryanna Clark GroganMake: Maple Chocolate Shoofly Pie. The Academic asks for this every second day (without fail). So quick to make and like a delicious, rich, brown-sugar textured chocolate custard - in a pie.

Great selection! Can't recommend Clark Grogan's 'World Vegan Feast' highly enough...her recipes are so innovative and accessible for everybody ...seasoned foodies and wannabe better home cooks alike! THIS is the way to help friends go vegan...and love every mouthful!!

I read vegan cookbooks like novels. I just love to peruse... The sad thing is that I don't have any of these!! Oh, I have others by some of the authors..but I need these. I really like "Vegan on $4 a day" that came out in 2011. Great resource for newer vegans...

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